


Movement Toward Entropy

by Churbooseanon



Series: Starlight Challenges [16]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 08:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4173075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Delta as York dies around him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Movement Toward Entropy

**Author's Note:**

> For Starlight Challenge Prompt 6/15/2015: When somebody leaves you, it’s like a death in your heart. So, I guess this is goodbye.

_I would prefer to stay with York._

The words were said an eon ago, and yet only moments before. Such, Delta supposes is the curse of synthetic life, or at least of a so called ‘Smart AI.’ Strangely enough he feels anything but smart in the moment. Smart AIs are living beings, closer to true life forms than ‘dumb’ AIs were, and thus should be prone to increased preservation instincts or at least programming than your run of the mill dumb AI should. 

Yet here he remains, feeling York’s armor beginning to shut down around him. Feeling the body and mind he considered a friend and lived so intimately tied to dying. Part of Delta’s subroutines make him wonder why he is making such a foolish decision. Had he gone with Texas then continued survival until such time as his rampancy would be achieved. In fact, due to the inherent nature of Texas, his own rampancy would pair up nicely to her own, resulting in a situation where he had no reason to be concerned that his own spiral into insanity and ultimate submission to the universal trend toward entropy would in no way negatively impact another individual’s mental stability.

Logic would dictate that he desire to preserve himself. Does in fact dictate it. It is illogical, he knows, by any stretch of calculation to remain within a rapidly degrading body. Well, rapidly considering the timeframe he has pushed himself into, where seconds are little different from hours and minutes little different from days. It is the only way to steal more time with York. Of course he doesn’t slip so far into nonsensical behavior as to dive deep into York’s nervous system and try to directly control him. Push York even further into unconsciousness so that even his subconscious mind could not perceive the horror of his last moments. 

Delta pulled away, right before he put York under, in fact. The close intimacy of their minds was too much as he tried to assure York that survival was a distinct possibility. There had been a moment, just before Delta had administered the sedatives, where York had tried to beg Tex not to let him do it. In a way Delta could understand that. So long as he been within York’s mind that he is well aware of the hows and whys of its function. Were he to try he is certain he could create a perfect simulacrum of York and his thought processes, but even that…

He dared not. 

Moments stretch on to private eternities as Delta encourages York’s suit into selective shut down. He wants to keep the power on as long as possible. Wants to remain alive as long as possible with his looming demise. Not because he’s scared of ceasing, as it were. Perhaps as fragments of the Alpha they were all forever doomed to an ending that other AI would find intolerable. Or perhaps they, as him, would strive to draw out the final moments they had with those they cared most of. 

There would never be one in this world that Delta cared for more than York. And to think that at first their fit had been a highly flawed decision on the part of the Director. His freelancer had been so impulsive, so foolish, so bound toward reckless behavior. More than that, his had come to him damaged, and Delta was expected to make something not only viable of that, but to make it excel. Not even his calculations at that point could account for how he would succeed. How they would succeed. How the task was so inherently flawed to think about. 

One cannot improve without changing that which they seek to improve. One cannot be a part of that improvement without being changed themselves. 

So many of York’s actions later in their bond had seemed more logically reasoned on an instinctual level than they had when Delta had first arrived. Even the silent way York had sat there on the Mother of Invention to process the information that Agent Texas, that Beta, had given them had shocked Delta. There had been a control to his anger, a patience to his call for revenge, a willingness to let others plan for him despite his urge to jump immediately into action that Delta had been proud of. 

Now, though, Delta wonders if York would have been proud of him. There was no logic in this action, in staying here, curled up in York’s silent gray matter as long as he could before pulling back into the suit for his own ending. There was no logic in standing vigil over the dead. Yet here he remained, here he clung and begged and hoped. 

York would never wake up. 

And still Delta waited through endless moment after endless moment. When the darkness reaches for him he finally pulls away from York, leaving behind the only instance of a word he swore never to utter. 

Goodbye. 

When he awakens days later and sees Agent Washington, it is all Delta can do not to flare into a brilliant point of rage. It will earn him nothing in the face of this final betrayal and loss. Instead he falls back into the creature he was before York. 

Cold, calculating, and dispassionate logic. 

He does not think he cares to feel any longer.


End file.
